In one technique for three-dimensional image reconstruction, a number of images or image sets of an object are captured with a camera that travels in a path over the surface of the object. This catalogue of image information can then be used to reconstruct a three-dimensional model of the object based upon the camera path and individual three-dimensional measurements captured along the camera path. In one aspect, the camera employs a number of offset optical channels that capture images from slightly different optical axes. The differences in these offset images contain depth information that can be used to calculate distance from the camera, and in turn to determine the three-dimensional contours of a scanned surface. One computationally intensive part of this technique involves matching features between pairs of images in an image set, which must be repeated many times for each image set in order to find corresponding feature locations in an image pair.
While various techniques are known for correlating features between images, there remains a need for improved techniques suitable for pattern matching in three-dimensional reconstruction.